Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Bouncing back


Thankfully, summer temperatures here in Sydney have returned to something approaching the norm following the record-setting 45°C scorcher a few weeks earlier. A few plants carked it in the days after the super-hot day, notably the cherry tomatoes, but some other plants have put on the most incredible burst of growth since then, powered by a good dose of several days of summer-style showers-and-sunshine combos. My eggplants in particular seem to have taken that heatwave day as the signal to get growing.

Here's the happy little person this morning,
one of three I have growing here, and all of
them are putting out lots of lush new foliage.

This is how the foliage looked on the day after the
45° scorcher. All of the leaves which curled
and burnt after the super-hot day have fallen from
the plant, provoking the new growth spurt.

Flowers are popping out everywhere. Aren't
family resemblances one of Nature's delights?
Just one glance at this flower says eggplants
and potatoes are Solanum clan cousins.

Baby fruits are everywhere too. This purple
and white-striped variety is 'Listada di Granada'
grown from seeds bought from Digger's.
I've often read that eggplants like the summer heat but I had only understood this as meaning "grow them in summer". However, having now seen how they have responded to that outrageous heatwave, I now know that eggplants don't just like summer heat, they thrive in it.


4 comments:

Mel said...

Jealous! I've had LOADS of blossoms on my eggplant but nothing has turned into fruit. What do you think I'm doing wrong - I'm growing in pots.

Jamie said...

I don't think you're doing anything wrong, Miss Piggy. I have had that problem with eggplants and cucumbers and other flowering crops and a few times they've come good by themselves.

The other answer is that the problem might be a lack of bees to do the pollinating for you, so I suggest you become an honorary bee, get out a small artist's paintbrush, waggle it into each flower in turn, to transfer pollen from flower to flower. That's worked a treat for me previously, so I hope it works for you!

Min said...

Glad to see some of your plants are thriving during this interesting weather we are having.

Your eggplant post ties in nicely with a book I'm currently reading called, 'How Carrots Won the Trojan War (Curious but true stories of common vegetables)' I had just finished the chapter on Eggplants, which at some stage in history were known as Mad Apples and had a reputation for being dangerous.

It's a fascinating book about the domestic origins of our most well know vegetables and quite funny to read how societies received them.

Haluna Happy said...

Your comments about the heat make sense to me - my husband is from Syria, and we eat cooked eggplant (and cooked okra) all summer long..... and summer in his part of Syria is hot and dry for at least 4 months....